John Clegg, a name as closely linked to misery as to talent, was, as already observed, a pupil of the last-named professor. He also travelled with Lord Ferrers into Italy, and much advanced his taste during his stay in that special home of the violin.
Castrucci, leader of the Opera-band in London during the early part of the last century, growing old, and losing much of his former vigour of execution, Handel, then at the head of the management, was desirous of placing Clegg in his station: but, knowing Castrucci to be in no exalted circumstances, and not wishing to wound his feelings, by making the intended change, without convincing him of his insufficiency, he adopted the following method for effecting his object:—He composed a violin concerto, in which the concertino (or second) part was purposely made as difficult of execution as the first. This piece he gave to Clegg, to be performed by him, accompanied by Castrucci; when the former executed his part with grace and facility, while the latter laboured through his portion of the performance, in a lame and imperfect manner. Castrucci, backward as he had been to admit the rival pretensions of Clegg, was constrained to yield to him the palm of victory; and Handel obtained his wish—but nevertheless retained Castrucci in the band, and was otherwise his friend, in subsequent days.
The beauty of Clegg’s tone, and the graces of his execution, won for him many admirers as a performer; but, alas! he purchased at far too dear a sacrifice the fame for which he strove. About the year 1742, he had so deranged his faculties by intense study and practice, that it became necessary to confine him in Bedlam. There, during lucid intervals, he was allowed the use of his instrument; and it was long an amusement, as fashionable as it was inhuman, to visit him, among other lunatics, in the hope of encountering him at some moment of security from his “battle of the brain,” in order to be entertained, either by his fiddle, or his folly! Barbarity like this has now happily ceased to disgrace the movements of fashion, and only leaves a feeling of wonder, to qualify the indignation which its remembrance excites.
Thomas Collet, of eccentric memory, enjoyed the reputation of being one of our principal native performers about the year 1745, when he led the orchestra of Vauxhall Gardens; an appointment then more highly considered than in these days. Possessing very little, however, either of taste or of musical knowledge, he was always an inelegant player, and owed his success to his powers of execution alone; yet these must have been exerted within a very confined compass, for Parke, in his “Musical Memoirs,” asserts Collet to have had such an aversion to playing high, that he dismissed one of his violin-performers for flourishing on the half-shift! Parke has added an anecdote about him, which must be confessed to savour not a little of the marvellous. “Although this gentleman, who was a great pigeon-fancier (continues Parke), did not go aloft on the fiddle, he went every day up to the top of his house, to see his pigeons fly; and on one occasion he was so lost in admiration of them, that, while clapping his hands and walking backwards, he walked over the leads of the house, and in the fall must have been dashed to pieces, had not his clothes been caught by a lamp-iron, to which he remained suspended (more frightened than hurt) until taken down by the passers-by.”
Francis Hackwood, whose convivial and entertaining qualities assisted his professional talent, in procuring for him the notice and support of the most influential among the patrons of music, was born in 1734. He attained some distinction among violin-performers; but the play of his wit and humour seems to have outlasted that of his instrument, in the impression produced—and no wonder, considering how much farther wit can be transmitted, than sound. It is one of the anecdotes related of this artist, that, at the conclusion of an Evening Concert given by Lord Hampden to a large assemblage of rank and fashion, when the performers had been taxed to exert themselves till a most unreasonable hour in the morning, his Lordship addressed to him the question, “Hackwood, will you stay and sup with us?”—and that the answer was, “No, my Lord, I can’t; for I think (taking out his watch) my wife must be waiting breakfast for me.”—In another anecdote, Hackwood figures as the cause of a jest, which is the next good thing to being its utterer. He was intimate with the late Sir C——r W——e, a Lincolnshire Baronet of large fortune, who, when not laid up by the gout, was a man of three-bottle capacity. At a gentlemen’s party given by this free votary of the grape, Hackwood, who had some pressing business to transact early in the ensuing day, and had heard the clock strike one, arose to depart. “Where are you going so soon?” inquired Sir C——r. “Home, Sir,” replied Hackwood; “it has struck one.”—“One!” exclaimed the Baronet; “pooh, pooh! Sit down, sit down! What’s one, among so many?”—Parke, the oboist, who gives this story, spoils the close of it by a bottle of Hollands gin, which he makes the two interlocutors to have drunk out between them, on the stairs, pour prendre congé. The gin lends no genuine spirit to the anecdote, and had better have been omitted by the narrator, who, besides, was probably in error as to its existence at all in the case. The man who, flushed with generous wine, has succeeded in saying a tolerably good thing, may fairly be considered as too happy, to be in any need of such extra stimulus as half a bottle of gin. Potation of that character is the resource of the dull. Parke has alluded generally, in no liberal temper, to the eccentricities of this professor, whose disposition he has mistaken, when attributing meanness to it. This charge he founds particularly on the fact of Hackwood’s having once shouldered his own violoncello (for he played that instrument also) on his way home from Apsley-House, to save expense of coach or porter, though he was himself attired “in an elegant suit of blue silk and silver.” Those who knew him better, could have furnished his detractor with a fairer reason for the proceeding in question, by suggesting that it arose from that anxious care for the safety of his instrument, which many a performer is well known to entertain, and which, in the instance of the individual now under notice, prevailed to such an extent as even to form one of his eccentricities. So far, indeed, from being of an illiberal spirit, he was a considerable loser by the too ready advance of money to the necessitous.
Hackwood lived till 1821, and was for some years father (as the term goes) of the Royal Society of Musicians.
It may be incidentally mentioned that a great benefit to our English performers on bow-stirred instruments in general, was produced by Abel’s residence here for about a quarter of a century. That fine musician and performer, the pupil and friend of Sebastian Bach, though he handled an instrument (the viol-da-gamba) of a species which was not in common use, and was even about to be completely laid aside, became nevertheless the model, in adagio-playing, of all our young professors on bowed instruments, who, taught by his discretion, taste, and pathetic manner of expressing a few notes, became more sparing of notes in a cantabile, and less inclined to attempt such flourishes as have no higher purpose than to display mechanical readiness. The wonders achieved by Abel in the extraction of tone from an instrument which, albeit possessed of some sweetness, was radically so crude and nasal, as the viol-da-gamba (that remnant of the old “chest of viols”), are something truly memorable among the triumphs of art. The Robert Lindley of our own day and country, transcendant in the quality of tone which he could elicit, stands a minor marvel, as compared in this sense with Abel,—his instrument being one that is naturally so much more grateful and practicable.
Richard Cudmore, a native of Chichester, was born in 1787. His success began with his juvenile days, for he performed a solo in public when only nine years old; and at eleven, with still higher ambition, he played a concerto at Chichester, composed by himself! Such a thing is of course only marvellous with reference to the means which it is possible for a child to possess: accordingly, on these occasions, there is always “a liberal discount allowed”—the indulgent auditor forming his estimate on the Horatian plan of “contentus parvo.” At twelve years of age, young Cudmore attained the provincial triumph of leading the band at the Chichester Theatre—played a concerto for the comic actor, Suett, at his benefit—and performed a violino primo part amongst the “older strengths” of the Italian Opera-band in London. In the mean time he was introduced to Salomon, and had the advantage of some training from that noted Master. After the subsequent enjoyment of some years of country fame, Cudmore changed the scene of his operations to London, and, giving scope to the versatility of his talent, became a pupil of Woelfl’s on the pianoforte, and, in the sequel, a public performer on that instrument also.—A striking proof of his musical ability is shewn in an anecdote recorded of him. On one occasion a performance took place at Rowland Hill’s Chapel, in Blackfriars Road, for which Salomon had rehearsed, in conjunction with Dr. Crotch and Jacobs. Salomon, however, being unexpectedly subpœnaed on a trial, requested Cudmore to become his substitute at the chapel, when he performed the music at sight, before from two to three thousand persons.—Another extraordinary instance of his skill in sight-playing, or what the French call l’exécution à livre ouvert, was given in a private concert at Mr. C. Nicholson’s, where he executed at sight a new and difficult manuscript concerto, which was accidentally brought thither.
At Liverpool, where he occasionally conducted the public concerts, he once performed a concerto on the violin by Rode; one on the piano by Kalkbrenner; and a third, by Cervetto, on the violoncello! At a later period, he became leader of the band at the establishment called the Manchester Amateur Concert.
G. F. Pinto, grandson of the performer of that name already noticed (whose ardent temperament he seems to have inherited, with no countervailing discretion), affords a remarkable instance of premature musical genius. He studied the violin under Salomon and Viotti, and, at fifteen years of age, had attained such accomplishment on that instrument, that he could lead an orchestra, in the performance of the symphonies of Haydn, with no very discernible inferiority to Salomon. He became also a proficient on the pianoforte, and evinced good knowledge of counterpoint, in several vocal publications of merit and originality, which he sent forth when about the age of seventeen. The syren voice of Pleasure, however, lured this promising genius to his destruction. Possessed of a fine person, and a mischievous store of vanity, he became a martyr to dissipation about the year 1808, before he had completed his twenty-first year.